MMW 11 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Undressed, Vaishya, Vedas

• School: UCSD
• Department: Making of the Modern World
• Course: MMW 11
• Professor: Page Dubois

Document Summary

Mmw 11 lecture 12 vedic religion, brahmanism, and the jains. Make fires to clear land for settlement. Thatched hut represented hut of settled householder. Carried fire across newly cleared territory to new edge of settlement. Emphasis on speech: more important that visuals. Not a lot of visual evidence: listening bring you closest to cohabitation with the sacred, chanting sacred activity. Singly syllable could incorporate all of the divine. Sacrifice: cattle, threw grain on fire, organizing principle. Gods made sky, earth, water; put on earth plant, earth, and man; triple sacrifice that allowed the static world to be put into motion (sun moves, seasons change) Caste attributed to sacrifice: hws 66-67. Dividing up of being became hierarchal: hierarchy of human beings present from the beginning. Caste fluid in the beginning, gradually became more strict. Outcastes perform impure" acts: slaughtering animals. Boundaries drawn among castes, smaller divisions within each caste as well.